About

Who We Are

Carmet Tugs are a successful and expanding family run Company and since 1971 have owned and operated tugs and workboats supporting the marine sector with services ranging from harbour towage, coastal towage and vessel charter for marine civil engineering, diving and dredging support.

The Company has over 40 year’s towage experience including coastal towage services around the UK and near Continent, in addition to being the sole towage contractor for the Manchester Ship Canal since 1989.

Based on the River Mersey Carmet Tugs ongoing support to the local Ports include workboat agency services, personnel transfers, shipwright services, aids to navigation support and vessel stores delivery services.

The Carmet Group has recently expanded with the addition of a shipyard facility on the River Mersey operating under Carmet Marine Ltd. Some of the services offered include vessel building, repair, and dry-docking facilities for tugs, workboats and CTVs.

Our History

Carmet Tugs was established in 1971 by Captains Mick Carrier and Ian Metcalfe, the company name coming from the first three letters of each surname.
Over the years Carmet have completed many successful towage contracts around the UK and near Continental coasts as well as the occasional tows to and from further afield. The craft being towed include cutter suction, bucket and back-hoe dredgers, jack-up rigs, floating cranes, flat top barges with a variety of heavy lifts on board, fish farms, new built ships and pipelines. All would be delivered to their destination with minimum of delay and often in adverse weather conditions.

In addition Carmet would supply small vessels to the marine civil engineering and dredging sector assisting in the building or demolishing of jetties, bridges, piers and harbours. Their craft would be used for personnel carrying, survey work, diving support, sea bed levelling, barge handling and any other marine aspect.
Although working with aged vessels the Carmet crews have proved themselves very professional, skilled and resilient obtaining much praise from clients

The partnership split up in 1986 and since then the company has been led from strength to strength by the single minded skills and management of Captain Ian Metcalfe.

In 1989 Carmet took over the management and running of the four tugs on the Manchester Ship Canal operating a system that ensures that two tugs are always available twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Since this time it is generally agreed that the standard of service and the condition of the tugs improved greatly.
In recent years the coastal towing operations have ceased and the company now operates in Liverpool, Birkenhead, the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal. With approximately thirty five employee’s Carmet Tug Company Ltd retains its ‘family company’ status.

Subscribe for our monthly Newsletter

Make sure to check your junk folder once you click subscribe!

Email Address

Facebook

Error: (#10) To use 'Page Public Content Access', your use of this endpoint must be reviewed and approved by Facebook. To submit this 'Page Public Content Access' feature for review please read our documentation on reviewable features: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review.Type: OAuthExceptionCode: 10Please refer to our Error Message Reference.